Hamburg has approved the A26-Ost route through Moorburg again, even though the Federal Administrative Court had found parts of the earlier planning unlawful because alternatives had not been sufficiently assessed on climate grounds. The supplementary planning decision keeps the existing route in place. Politically, it is a clear commitment to the port connection; legally, it is an attempt to repair a flaw in the earlier approval.
According to Der Spiegel, the court’s October 2025 ruling required closer consideration of alternative routes in light of climate protection. Hamburg’s economic authority says those objections have now been addressed and still regards the Moorburg route as the most advantageous option. Its strongest point is valid: the court did not ban the motorway project itself. A planning error does not automatically make the project impermissible.
That is precisely why the dispute now turns on the substance of the supplementary decision, rather than on the fact that Hamburg has approved the route again. The supplied report does not show how alternatives were compared or how climate effects were weighed. Without that reasoning, it is not possible to judge whether the new decision has genuinely addressed the weakness identified by the court or simply supported the same route with an additional review.
The stakes extend beyond one section of road. The roughly ten-kilometre port passage is intended to connect the A1 and A7, and includes plans for a 53-metre bridge over the Süderelbe and a tunnel in Wilhelmsburg. Germany’s federal government had most recently put the cost at €2.6 billion. For a project of that scale, a robust balance between transport needs, peat soils and climate protection is central to legally durable planning.
NABU and BUND said they would examine the supplementary decision and reserved the option of further legal action. The renewed approval therefore does not settle the dispute. It shifts it to whether Hamburg has transparently carried out the serious climate assessment of alternatives demanded by the court.
Sources
- Der Spiegel · Source date: 2026-11-11
Independent editorial content. WUA is not affiliated with any political party. 2026-11-11